


touch the sky cause you got it (we'll be here forever)

by cougarlips



Series: the "zuko is a freedom fighter" canon divergent jetko au no one asked for [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, Coping, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gay Zuko (Avatar), Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jet (Avatar) Needs a Hug, M/M, War, Zuko (Avatar) Needs a Hug, these are child soldiers babey!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:53:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22935124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cougarlips/pseuds/cougarlips
Summary: His eyes were shut again, but the sun shone on him like a spotlight.Jet wanted to reach out and touch him.
Relationships: Jet/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: the "zuko is a freedom fighter" canon divergent jetko au no one asked for [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1630861
Comments: 24
Kudos: 672





	touch the sky cause you got it (we'll be here forever)

**Author's Note:**

> a long one i've been sitting on and rewriting and sitting on some more bc i've been sick and just wanna write some emotional catharsis??? this is in my freedom fighter zuko au that is going somewhere but idk where lol
> 
> title is from legends by sleeping with sirens

After reuniting inside the mid-sized town, they chose to go back on the road.

Zuko couldn’t be too close to the city or in too-popular an area, even if he kept the lowest profile he could manage.

Iroh bid Zuko goodbye with a firm embrace and tearful eyes, but he smiled the whole time. He even hugged Jet, Smellerbee, and Longshot, to their surprise. He thanked them for everything they’d done for Zuko -- because, apparently, since meeting them he’d become a warmer, more open person.

His parting wish was only that Zuko learn to love himself as he was, and he hoped that, maybe, traveling with the trio could allow him that chance. 

Jet woke up a few hours past sunrise, as he always had, but when he got up and began looking for Zuko he found him some ways away: practicing forms unlike anything Jet had ever seen, fire dancing from his palms. He looked serene, his eyes open but heavy lidded.

There was something in how he managed the fire that Jet didn’t automatically see it as an enemy ability. He tensed as soon as he realized that.

Zuko’s skin glistened in the sunlight, sweat dripping between his shoulder blades and soaking into the waistband of his pants. Jet watched him extinguish his fire before he took several calming breaths and picked up his swords.

_This_ Jet was used to: watching Zuko run through his stances. But there was a part of Jet that half expected Zuko to light the steel on fire again, to fully embrace his identity as he had during their match on the rooftop, like he had when he drove away the bandits.

“Why don’t you use your bending?” he finally just asked. He was glad to see Zuko didn’t turn around, panicked. It told Jet he was aware enough of his surroundings to know he had been there the whole time.

But Zuko didn’t falter in his warm-up. Still facing the sun, he answered, “I learned swordsmanship so I could fight without fire.”

Jet felt his face screw up in confusion. “Why?” he asked. A fire bender, not wanting to fight with fire?

(But this was the same person, Jet’s inner voice whispered, who traveled alongside them for months without bending. He _wasn’t_ a typical fire bender.)

“After I was banished,” Zuko answered, and Jet stiffened at the unspoken _when I was branded_ , “my bending was blocked. I was encouraged to learn another skill in its place until I was ready to bend again.”

He stilled and set his blades down, turning around to face Jet. His expression was calm. He smiled, but there was something ironic in the way he held it. “I was never the bender my sister was, and I certainly don’t hold a candle to my father’s power. After my bending was blocked, I… regressed, almost completely.”

He sat down on the earth beneath them, and Jet followed suit. He didn’t want to interrupt Zuko -- there was a part of him still just as interested in learning about his… friend? Partner? He didn’t know how to describe their relationship anymore.

Li never had been one to talk about his past. Now that Zuko was openly sharing, Jet didn’t want to compromise it.

“Young firebenders,” Zuko began, “don’t have control over their fire. It bursts out of them in moments of high emotion, and it can get out of hand quickly if they don’t have someone there to calm them and the fire down.”

He opened his palm between them and, as if to demonstrate his point, lit a tiny ball of flame above it. He allowed it to grow, steadily larger, until his whole hand enveloped in the flame -- and then he tamped it down, back to a candle’s glow.

“I’ve always had a problem with my temper,” he admitted sheepishly. Then, he frowned. “After my banishment, I was so _angry._ I was angry at my father for what he did and abandoning me, and I was angry with myself for interrupting at the council meeting and making him do that to me.

“When I wanted to bend, I couldn’t. When I wasn’t thinking rationally, I couldn’t control my bending or keep it in check,” he said. He allowed the glow in the palm of his hand to disappear. “Uncle had to teach me how to control it again. I was forced to relearn the basics while my sister was learning elite skills.”

“So… you took up swords?” Jet assumed.

He nodded. “I thought if I can’t guarantee I’ll always be able to control or command fire, I can at least guarantee I’ll be able to control my swords.”

“That… makes sense,” Jet admitted grudgingly. “But then, why wield them with fire when you fight?”

Zuko looked uncomfortable for a moment but he eventually answered, “I haven’t ever before. But… fire benders can be hot headed and irrational. Fire is linked to emotion, and if my emotions are out of control then fire can be too. I’m lucky I can control it when it does burst out now.”

“That means when you were saving us from the bandits…?”

“I couldn’t stand seeing them hurt you guys. Not when I could’ve done something to make sure they _couldn’t_ hurt you.”

Jet looked at Zuko. His face was serene again. Relaxed. Peaceful. But when he opened his eyes there was something in their depths that made Jet think twice about his state of mind. It was in the way his bad eye seemed thinner, more narrowed: almost impossible to notice unless that person was familiar with Zuko’s face. (And Jet, much as he might not want to admit it, was quite familiar with it.)

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

But Zuko shook his head.

Jet’s own eyes narrowed at Zuko, and he could feel his own anger seep into him.

“Listen,” Jet began, trying to keep his voice even but he could tell he was failing. “I’m… I’m _trying_ to be understanding, but I can’t do that if you don’t tell me what you’re thinking.

“I -- I chose _us_ , Zuko,” he said, forcefully saying his true name. He hadn’t said it outside of when he was goading Zuko to fight him on the teashop’s rooftop. 

Zuko’s eyes met his as he processed what Jet said. “I don’t know where to go from here. I want us to be… I don’t know, _partners_ again.” Jet looked down at his hands, clenching them angrily, trying to keep himself calm, but he felt like a kettle that needed to let out its steam.

“I know that doesn’t make sense. _I_ sure as fuck don’t understand why I want us to stay together. All I know is that I do. And you, shutting yourself down -- it isn’t helping either of us.

“I’m… I want us to be _us_ again,” he repeated, trying to get Zuko to _understand_. “And I know I have to work on my shit, too, but I’m willing to try. _We_ can’t work if you don’t work with me.”

Zuko spoke, and Jet could hear a tentative smile curling into Zuko’s words. “I didn’t think you’d want to be with me still.”

“Well, I didn’t think I’d ever trust a fire bender with my life. We’re even.”

Zuko looked at him for a few more moments, searching Jet’s expression for… something. A sign that he was lying, or maybe a hint of uncertainty in his eyes. And then he sighed.

“I can’t… I mean,” he amended, “I don’t _know_ how to explain it. I… _hated_ myself. Fuck, I think I still do.” He smiled sardonically, rolling his eyes towards the sky with a shake of his head.

“You know, in the Fire Nation we’re raised to believe the war was all to spread our wealth and prosperity? And that that’s all we’re doing now? We were taught the Air Nomads had an army determined to stop us, so we killed them in self defense. We didn’t kidnap water benders from the South until _they_ tried to attack _us_. We teach our young that we, the Fire Nation, are the victims of this war for trying to share our power, and I _believed_ that because it’s what we were _all_ told. I had no reason to believe otherwise.”

Zuko’s look was… strange. He didn’t seem to want pity, nor did he appear desperate. His voice was strained, but his expression was calm -- or mostly so, at least.

His mouth twisted in frustration. “When I sat in on my first war meeting, I was -- I was so shocked that the generals held so little value in our own peoples’ lives. We’re supposed to be spreading prosperity, not killing our own in an attempt to kill others. And when I spoke out against it, my father scalded me in front of his entire audience and threw me to the ocean.”

Jet watched Zuko’s eyes narrow again, but this time when he exhaled smoke escaped his nostrils. He shook his head and the cloud cleared, but he forced himself to breathe for a few moments before continuing, his voice blanketed in a forced calm.

“I spent years still thinking the Fire Nation was right and _I_ was wrong. I chased the idea of the avatar years before he resurfaced in the South Pole, because if I could prove he was out there I would redeem myself in my father’s eyes. I finally found Aang and I chased him across the world even though I knew if I caught him and brought him back to the Fire Lord, he’d have been killed just like his people.

“Aang knew it, too, but he still saved me this winter. He saved me, and I owe him my life. I’ve been living on the road with Uncle since then, but we parted ways and….” 

He stopped, trying to figure out what he wanted to say next.

“I’ve _seen_ how the rest of the world views us, Jet,” he finally said, and when he spoke his voice was… heavy. “Aang didn’t know better, but his companions? Their mother was murdered during our last raid on the South Pole.”

_Katara,_ Jet thought, but he didn’t interrupt.

“We murdered an entire race and nearly killed the Southern Water Tribe. We waged a 600-day siege against Ba Sing Se to finally infiltrate the only nation we hadn’t forced to succumb to us, and the only reason the Fire Nation retreated was because Uncle lost his son during the siege and couldn’t fight any more.”

Zuko fell quiet, breathing deeply again, his eyes shut in an attempt to calm himself down. Jet didn’t quite know how to reply; so much had been laid out in front of him that his head was trying to pick up the pieces as best he could. 

(Part of Jet wondered when the last time Zuko allowed himself to truly step back and evaluate his life was. It felt, to Jet, like this was the first time he ever had.)

He always figured the Fire Nation taught their own version of history, but he never expected to find it as warped as it had been. Yet here Zuko was: royalty of the Fire Nation, in essence everything Jet should have hated and despised and wanted to see dead. Zuko, sitting completely defenseless in front of Jet on the dirt ridden floor in a hidden corner of the Earth Kingdom, explaining why… why he hated himself?

That was what got Jet the most, he thought. Zuko should’ve been everything Jet hated, but he wasn’t… because Zuko hated _himself_.

“I met a girl,” Zuko continued. His voice was low, soft. “She was younger than us, but she and her mother took me and Uncle in because Uncle was sick. She’d been burnt during a raid when she was a little girl because… she’d gotten in the way. Like me.”

“If you hate what the Fire Nation has done, why would you ever want to go _back_?” Jet heard himself ask. He didn’t mean to interrupt, but he couldn’t help it. Something inside him ached at the way Zuko was talking about himself, like he was broken.

“Because it’s my _home_ ,” Zuko answered, and he started to laugh. It was a sad, dismal sound. “But I hate what the Fire Nation has become. Soldiers fighting just to prove they’re stronger than anyone else, all of the raids, the people that are murdered when there are uprisings. Sokka and Katara’s mom, your family, Smellerbee and Longshot’s families -- I can’t be a part of the Fire Nation if this is what we’ve turned into, but it’s where I was born and where my mother tried to raise us. This _can’t_ be all the Fire Nation is destined for.”

“So _forget_ the Fire Nation. Let Aang deal with it. Or your Uncle. You don’t owe them anything, okay? You’ve been fucked up enough by them to be allowed to tell them to fuck right off, too.” Jet felt a kind of desperation coloring his voice, but he couldn’t keep it out. “You can make a new home with us. The Earth Kingdom can be your home.”

Zuko’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, but the corner of his mouth twitched in what he probably hoped was an encouraging look. “Maybe it can be. For now.”

They sat for another few moments in silence, birds chirping in the trees above them as the sun continued to illuminate the scene. Jet wanted time to stop at that moment, to freeze the memory in his mind.

He looked at Zuko again, taking in the way he sat in a meditative position: his back straight as a pin, his chin high, his hands in relaxed fists pressed against the other just in front of his stomach. His eyes were shut again, but the sun shone on him like a spotlight.

Jet wanted to reach out and touch him. He wanted to press their sides together and feel if he was as warm as he looked (and Jet knew that he _was_ , but he still wanted to feel it).

“Can I kiss you?”

Zuko’s eyes batted open in surprise, and Jet almost smiled at the way his cheeks suddenly flushed a deep red. “I-- why?” he asked before he could filter himself.

Jet’s brows knit together. “I just….” His voice trailed away. Then he shrugged. Transparency was always the best policy.

“I want to.”

At the look of disbelief on Zuko’s face, Jet frowned.

“You… sometimes you can be so _stupid_ , Zuko,” he told him. He took it upon himself to move beside him, partially so he could press their shoulders together. Zuko didn’t remove his eyes from Jet.

“You’re a likable person,” Jet said. “You’re stubborn and you do things the hard way almost all the time and you -- you’ve somehow managed to convince yourself no one could ever even _tolerate_ you unless they’re obligated to, like your uncle.”

Zuko’s frown deepened and he began to open his mouth to argue but Jet shook his head, cutting him off. “You’re a good fucking person, and it -- it makes me jealous.”

He shrugged his shoulders, eyes turning back towards the horizon. “You’ve done shitty things, but you’ve done them for good reasons. I can’t say that. I like to pretend everything I’ve done has been for the right reasons, but it’s just a lie I tell myself to feel better.”

“What are you talking about?”

Jet recalled the look on Katara’s face as she froze his body in place. His chest ached.

(Maybe he could just make the move. Distract Zuko with a kiss, with his body. Avoid talking about why he was a bad person, why he didn’t deserve to be with someone like Zuko.)

(But Zuko deserved honesty. And Jet couldn’t deny him that, no matter how badly he hurt from it.)

“I lost my family and my home to the Fire Nation, and ever since I’ve been fighting every Fire Nation soldier I come across. But I… I hated them,” he admitted, a rueful smile on his mouth. It didn’t reach his eyes. “I lost myself in that hatred for a long time. I still lose myself in it. And when I get into that kind of mind I just….”

He shook his head.

Zuko nodded.

“You lose control.”

It was another few moments before Jet spoke, and when he did his voice was low.

“I tried to use Aang and Katara to kill an entire village when I met them.” He looked only at his hands, at the dirt crusted underneath his nails and how there were a few specks of blood left around his cuticles from the last time he managed to talk Zuko into sparring with him. “I wanted to get rid of the Fire Nation soldiers, and I didn’t see the problem in killing innocents if it meant the threat was gone.”

“Jet….”

“No, I need to say this,” Jet continued. He looked at the scars on his hands: so many he couldn’t pinpoint where one ended and another began. His skin was hard under his fingertips, bumpy and raised like patchwork through the injuries he’d sustained his entire life. “I gathered up barrels of blasting jelly and placed them across the village during the night, and I made the call to ignite them.

“You talk about your father and his generals being careless with your own people, but I’m just as bad. I would’ve killed innocent civilians, my own people, my Earth Kingdom brothers and sisters, just to get back at the handful of Fire Nation soldiers there. I’m exactly the same as the people you hate.”

But when Zuko simply nudged their shoulders together, Jet couldn’t help but look up and meet his eyes. They were… calm. He looked almost… happy?

“Maybe we’re even, then,” Zuko said, and it was so unexpected that Zuko even smiled at the look on Jet’s face.

“How can you _say_ that?”

Zuko tentatively raised a hand and brushed his fingers through Jet’s hair, brushing the coils away from his face. “You’re supposed to hate me, too, right? Being Fire Nation and a bender and all. But… you don’t. And you don’t really understand why.” He shrugged. “I should hate you too, probably, but I don’t.”

Zuko’s eyes flickered to Jet’s mouth, but before either of them moved Jet shook his head. “I don’t hate you because you know how fucked everything is and that it needs to be fixed.”

“And maybe I don’t hate you because you regret how you’ve let your anger rule you in the past and you _want_ to change.”

They closed the distance between them. Zuko’s lips were a little dry and still tasted a little like sweat and salt to Jet, but he savored the taste of him. It was the kind of warmth that built slowly and became sweltering, but Jet didn’t care, not when Zuko was placing one palm on Jet’s neck and the other arm snaked around his waist, pulling him close.

Zuko smelled like smouldering wood and he felt like a living ember under Jet’s fingertips.

Jet smiled into the kiss. 


End file.
